If we are the government, we certainly do a lot of stuff to ourselves that isn’t very nice. Here, in no particular order, are some examples from the past week or two:

Under U.S. law, it’s a crime to provide “material support” to any group designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” by the U.S. government. And the Justice Department has interpreted such support to include speaking engagements that are coordinated with the terrorist organization and serve to benefit it. Even filing an amicus brief on behalf of the organization or publicly challenging its “terrorist” designation can itself be construed as “material support.”

Funny — telling me what I can and can’t say in public isn’t behavior I normally attribute to people who are working for me. And I’m not in the habit of “working together” with other people to formulate policies about what I’m allowed to say. Telling me what I’m allowed to say is behavior I normally associate with people who think they’re my bosses.

In yet another SWAT drug raid on the wrong house, as reported by Radley Balko (“Another Isolated Incident,” Reason, Jan. 13), the uniformed thugs pulled the father (David McKay) outside in his underwear, pointed a gun at the 13-year-old daughter and — standard operating procedure for cops in such raids — threatened to shoot the family poodle. When it became apparent the armed invaders had kicked in the wrong door and they moved on to their intended target, the McKays asked them what was happening and why they were there. “They wouldn’t say,” he recalled. “All they would say was ‘You’ll read about it in the paper tomorrow.’”

A People's Uprising Against the Empire
posted 02/01/2011, 9:48 AM (Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.)[Category: Commentary] Those of the young generation, people too young to remember the collapse of Soviet-bloc and other socialist states in 1989 and 1990, are fortunate to be living through another thrilling example of a seemingly impenetrable State edifice reduced to impotence when faced with crowds demanding freedom, peace, and justice.

There is surely no greater event than this. To see it instills in us a sense of hope that the longing for freedom that beats in the hear... (more)

Let My People Go
posted 02/01/2011, 9:48 AM (Thomas L. Knapp)[Category: Commentary]As I write this, the Egyptian state seemingly totters on the brink of collapse. One last push from what appears to be a genuine, spontaneous popular uprising may be all it takes to send “president for life” Hosni Mubarak into exile or to a wall with (perhaps) a blindfold and final cigarette.

That’s how it looks, anyway. Predicting the future of developments like this is always risky, but with the army apparently operationally neutral and its troops openly fraternizing with the rev... (more)